Microsoft Corp. today announced the highly anticipated winners of its Dream-Build-Play 2008 game development contest, which encouraged independent and hobbyist game developers to create innovative and fun-to-play video games for Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio. Four winners received a total of more than $70,000 in cash prizes to pursue a development career, and will have the opportunity to receive an invitation to publish their games on Xbox LIVE Arcade. This year's global Dream-Build-Play competition garnered more 350 games from over 100 countries, nearly doubling the number of community members who enrolled in and submitted Dream-Build-Play titles in last year's competition. Many of those games will have the opportunity to appear on the Xbox LIVE Community Games Channel when it launches to millions on Nov. 19 as part of the New Xbox Experience.
Team Gambit of Singapore received the first place prize of $40,000 for "CarnyVale: Showtime" an acrobatic puzzle game where players are asked to complete various circus stunts. Chia even built-in a circus map editor for players to create their own obstacles to overcome, bringing user-generated content to a new a level.
Jose Alberto Gomez and his team from Venezuela took home second place and $20,000 for his stunning, 3D, action tennis submission, "Battle Tennis."Mommy's Best Games, led by Nathan Fouts received third place and $10,000 for the high-energy, side-scrolling "Weapon of Choice." China's Hu Ling and his team came in fourth place and received $5,000 for his stylized martial arts action game "HurricaneX." Last year's first place winner David Flook of Canada, and a team from South Africa led by Roger Miller received honorable mentions for their games "Blow" and "Save Jack" respectively.
"We've been absolutely blown away by the quality of games we received through Dream-Build-Play this year," XNA General Manager Boyd Multerer said. "What is really exciting isn't that we've unearthed all of this truly remarkable talent, but that many of these aspiring developers will have an opportunity to share their creations with millions when Xbox LIVE Community Games launches next month."
Microsoft announced earlier this month that the next iteration of its industry leading game development toolset, XNA Game Studio 3.0 will be available for download on Oct. 30. Not only will the upgraded toolset allow developers to distribute their games to millions on Xbox LIVE Community Games on Nov. 19, but it will also allow developers to create and play games on Zune.
XNA Game Studio 3.0 also takes advantage of new improvements and support in Visual Studio 2008, C# 3.0, LINQ and broader partner support from Softimage and GarageGames. Softimage is now building on their relationship with XNA by offering a special version of the free Mod Tool for commercial use by Creators Club Members. GarageGames is releasing a brand new 3D editor for their Torque X3D game engine. Both the engine and the new 3D editor will be completely free to all Creators Club members. That means that Creators Club Members can use the XSI Mod Tool and Torque X 3D to create even more amazing titles for Xbox LIVE Community Games.
More detailed information about Dream-Build-Play and XNA Game Studio 3.0 and Creators Club Membership can be found by visiting www.creators.xna.com.
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